There is a hot pink and lime green childhood bedroom somewhere in Rossville, Georgia, covered in frogs, where a little girl used to sing into her mirror and dream about her future. Little did she know just how bright that future would become. "Whatever was in me as a little girl that knew that I had this journey ahead of me, I'm just so thankful," says Lauren Alaina.
Next month, Alaina releases Stages, her fourth studio album and most ambitious and personal album to date. It is an album that traces the arc of her life from that Georgia bedroom (for the album's photo shoot, the art department recreated her childhood bedroom in precise detail from the hot pink walls, the lime green accents, the frogs, to he childhood trophies and handwritten songs her mother had saved for decades) to American Idol, through a wild and messy twenties full of public breakups and hard lessons, and into the wife, mother to one-year-old Beni Doll Arnold, and artist that she is today. "I wanted to create an album that represented all of those seasons of my life," she says. "I named it Stages because it represents three stages of my life."
The album's concept emerged almost accidentally. Alaina had been writing and recording music drawn from different chapters of her life when she stepped back and realized what she had built.
Stage one starts back at the beginning with her parents' love story. The girl who showed up on American Idol (season 10 runner-up) at fifteen years old and let the whole country watch. Stage two addresses her twenties honestly, something she has never quite given herself permission to do before. "I went through a few pretty significant breakups from 20 to 30," she says. "I lived through very public breakups in my twenties and never really addressed them, because I was living it and I didn't really know how to speak on any of it at the time." She was writing those songs all along, she says, but never releasing them. Now they have a home on Stages.
Stage three is where she lives today. Settled and at peace in a way she couldn't have predicted. "I have landed in a really wonderful spot," she says. "And I am in a really solid place emotionally. I just feel so proud of the woman that I have become."
The word 'stages' itself carries double meaning. "In general, it represents so much in my life because of who I am," she says. "People have watched me audition on the American Idol stage and I get out on stage every night. It just felt like the perfect title."
With a concept album that draws from a busy life,
When asked what song was the most difficult to record, Alaina points to a song she didn't write, "Paints the Picket." "When I record songs that I did not write, they have to feel like I wrote them," she says. "They have to be so true enough to me that I could've written them. I want my family to listen to the songs without knowing I didn't write them and feel like I could've written them."
"Paints the Picket" captures the quiet unraveling of her parents' marriage through the painful avoidance of it. A man outside painting the fence. A woman inside cleaning the house. Two people refusing to say what needs to be said. "They're both ignoring the bigger picture, which is that they should be talking to one another about what's going on," she says. "That song will probably be hard to perform, just because of what it represents for me. It's one of the more emotional songs for sure."
This fall, Alaina takes the album on the road for her headline Stages Tour, with dates in October and November. The set list, still taking shape, is designed to mirror the album's concept with singles that truly marked each season of her career. "The singles, the songs that you go to radio with aren't necessarily the songs that are always the most meaningful on each project," she says. "I want to definitely be able to incorporate some of the older songs that people fell in love with in the early seasons of my career."
The tour's openers — Hannah Harper, Shane Profitt, and Ashley Kutcher — were each chosen for reasons that feel entirely on-brand for the 31-year-old. Hannah Harper, who just won American Idol, was a clear choice. "I was like, 'We got to have Hannah for this tour because that's the stage I started on and that's the stage she just started on.'" Shane Profitt earned his spot after Alaina literally sobbed onstage listening to him perform a song about his parents. "Anything I can do to support and lift up Shane Profitt, I will do it forever," she says. And Ashley Kutcher was discovered entirely through social media. Her videos appeared on Alaina's For You page, and within weeks she had a tour offer. "I've never met her. I've never talked to her," Alaina says. "I saw her pop up on social media and I was like, 'This girl seems cool. Let's do this.'"
Beyond the album and the tour, Alaina has launched another creative outlet that speaks to a longer-held ambition. LA Lately, her YouTube series, gives her a platform to interview peers and public figures she admires. It's something she has been drawn to for as long as she can remember.
"A dream of mine would be like the Kelly Clarkson Show," she says. "I would love to do something like that. She's my hero, being on American Idol, singing and having that show." LA Lately is her version of that. It's a space to connect with people, tell stories, and introduce her fans to the voices she finds most interesting. Guests have included Trisha Yearwood, Russell Dickerson and his wife Kailey, and Martina McBride. McBride was one of Alaina's earliest heroes. She took Alaina on one of her first major tours. And sitting with her McBride while she was pregnant, talking about motherhood and career and how to hold both at once, felt like something magical.
"She has such grace and dignity and she's so kind," Alaina says. "She made the time to come to my house, talk to me for my web series. And we talked about motherhood and music and career." She reflects. "My dad challenged me that I couldn't hit the big note in "Broken Wing." So I practiced for weeks. Fast-forward 25 years later, 2025, and to be sitting there talking to her about my own daughter was just really impactful."
Alaina's boundless enthusiasm for her baby girl is contagious. "She is my purpose now," she says. "I have for so long been really focused on my career and who I'm supposed to be in my career. And this little surprise angel came and she is now my purpose, so everything else is a bonus. At the end of the day, if everything went away, if I never had another hit, I never wrote another song, I never got on another stage, I would still be her mom and that's the best stage I've ever stood on," she says. "I still want the hits. It's still a huge part of who I am. I still want to play, to sell out the arenas, and to make movies, and host TV shows and do all of that. But the most important thing is to be her mother, and to be a good mother, and to be a good wife."
When asked what she would say to the fifteen-year-old who walked onto the American Idol stage all those years ago, Alaina says, "I would tell her, 'You get everything you've ever wanted.'" LaurenAlaina.com